Turns out it wasn’t Mussolini who made the trains run on time but Ferrari. Let me explain. And by explain I mean “greatly oversimplify.” Back in 2006, Luca di Montezemolo, chairman of Ferrari (among other things), was so fed up with the state of Italian railway services that he decided to create a private operator. Getting this off the ground was one formidable uphill battle, but one of the side effects was that Trenitalia realised they needed to get their act together. And, lo and behold, performance did improve and, somehow, they also applied what they’d learned to local services where there wasn’t any competition. And so it happens that by and large, trains are running on time rather than basically always being fifteen minutes late for no reason at all.

Travel thread time! This one is going to be chaotic. In lieu of a plan I have an Interrail pass and a hotel booking in Venice for tomorrow evening. Since Arriva seems to be running some trains at least, I have now decided to go to Cologne via Aachen. And whither then? I cannot say.

Also a quick reminder that deploying double bendy busses really means that you need a tram.

Nine hours is a pretty spectacular delay. (The bridge in Rendsburg was closed from 23:05 for engineering works which presumably was why the train was scheduled 45 minutes earlier than usual to make it through before curfew. But it wasn’t to be.)

If Lenovo has stopped shipping to the US, shouldn’t that mean that Thinkpads get cheaper in Europe?